INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND BOOK,.
BY THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATOR.
In this second book of his Commonwealth, Cicero gives us a spirited and eloquent review of the history and successive developments of the Roman constitution.

He bestows the warmest praises on its early kings, points out the great advantages which had resulted from its primitive monarchical system, and explains how that system had been gradually broken up.

In order to prove the importance of reviving it, he gives a glowing picture of the evils and disasters that had befallen the Roman State in consequence of that overcharge of democratic folly and violence which had gradually gained an alarming preponderance, and describes, with a kind of prophetic sagacity, the fruit of his political experience, the subsequent revolutions of the Roman State, which such a state of things would necessarily bring about..